Semi-Autonomous Underwater Vehicles

Recent at-sea crashes of jet aircraft and the resulting search for the
elusive black boxes ... the hunt for lost nuclear submarines ... the
exploration of the Titanic and sunken ships.

The UH SAUV Team

All have made use, to varying degrees, of underwater vehicles, usually
manned submersibles or remotely operated vehicles. Use of these vehicles
is costly because the operations must be commanded from a ship, with all
the accompanying costs and risks of taking a ship to sea. The performance
of these vehicles also depends largely on the skill of human operators and
such factors as time delays within the man-machine control loop in the
hazardous marine environment.

A solution to these shortcomings could be found in semi-autonomous
underwater vehicles, which would be pre-programmed to conduct their
undersea missions and would also roam free of human operation unless deemed necessary.

This new generation of undersea explorer is being designed by two
University of Hawaii research engineers, Junku Yuh and Song Choi, in a project
funded by the Office of Naval Research. Their design differs from existing underwater
vehicles in two ways: It has a fully functional manipulator (commonly
referred to as the "arm") and uses a unique supervisory controller. This
controller is capable of communicating with a shore-based station to plan,
verify, and change the vehicle and manipulator's operations. The operator,
on land, can always intervene if the vehicle strays. However, if the
operation is working as planned, the vehicle would carry outs its mission
autonomous of human intervention.

The vehicle is expected to be seaworthy by year 2000.

A full description of the project, along with technical specifications,
can be found on the project's web
site.